


twist the drama of the play to get us by

by statusquo_ergo



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: 6x12 rewrite, Coda, Fix-It, M/M, Mike goes with Harvey to Boston, post 6x11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-22 17:34:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9618086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/statusquo_ergo/pseuds/statusquo_ergo
Summary: Mike takes some time to think about the consequences of his actions.Alternatively titled:Mike's Somewhat Dawdling But Very Sincere Apology, and His Ensuing Act(s) of Recompense





	1. staring back in time

Mike stabs the button for the lobby, “LL,” then stabs it again as he seethes, breathing in and out through his parted lips. His vision blurs when he furrows his brow, his head pounding, his chest aching; the elevator car trembles as it hits the ground floor and the doors take hours to open, sliding apart at millimeters per minute to free him from this disgusting place. Slamming his hand against control panel, Mike ignores the security guard’s reprimanding shout and storms out the door into the dark, swinging left and stomping down the street.

_Mike._

Clenching his teeth, he balls his hands into fists and wishes for a second that his nails were long enough to bite into the flesh.

_Mike, where do you think you’re going?_

Harvey’s voice echoes in his head and he grinds his molars, tensing his shoulders.

_Mike!_

“Dammit, Harvey!”

A woman walking in his direction gives him a wider berth and looks down at her boots as she passes.

I was just trying to help, just trying to help. There’s no phrase in the entire English language more horrifying, more stomach-turning, more— _treacherous._ Mike presses the heels of his hands to his eyes and stumbles when his heel hits the curb, fumbling backwards before he falls into the crosswalk.

Fuck, fuck, _fuck._

Can’t take a simple “No,” can you, you bastard. You self-centered _asshole._

The cold nips at his bare hands, seeping in under his open jacket as he walks haphazardly down the block, warming by single digits when he thunders down the steps to the 6, reaching into his jacket pocket for his MetroCard and sliding it through the reader— _PLEASE SWIPE AGAIN_ —why, why _now,_ why _me,_ have I suffered enough for all of your _lies_ and your _selfishness_ and your _greed_ — _PLEASE SWIPE AGAIN AT THIS TURNSTILE_ —haven’t I done everything for you and _this_ is how you repay me, you _fucking bastard!_

_PLEASE SWIPE AGAIN AT THIS TURNSTILE._

“NO!”

Mike doesn’t want to go home, not really, not right now, not to that place where he’ll be boxed in with the world out there and all its wide open space teasing him, taunting him. Spinning on his heel, he stalks back to the stairs and hauls himself up by the railing, surging in fits and starts until he reaches street level, backlit by the fluorescents below and alone, alone, alone.

_I don’t care what you meant._

He wants to scream, wants to cry, wants to run, run far away from here, magically disappear (and all our problems, too). This isn’t the life he envisioned, this isn’t the life he’s worked for, strived for, bit and scratched and fought for. The life he’s _earned_ , the life he _deserves._

Isn’t it though? (the voices whisper in the back of his brain.)

Isn’t it, you worthless little shit?

You’re the biggest hypocrite of them all, (I know, I know,) defending the law night and day as you flout it in the same breath, twisting the truth and bending the rules every which way until who knows what’s up or down, inside out and turned around. (I know, I know.) You deserve to burn, to go down in these flames you’ve lit underneath your feet, this fire that spread to everything you’ve ever touched.

(Go to hell.)

_I just need someone I can trust._

Oh, is that right? Does he really? Well, maybe he should’ve thought of that when he was making sure to destroy the last bridge back to the only life I’ve ever lived that was worth anything.

And now what?

Now what.

Look around; this is Central Park.

Mike walks until he doesn’t anymore, collapsing in the grass and rolling on his back to face the sickly blue grey sky.

The rest is silence.

\---

It’s still dark out; sunrise isn’t until a little after seven.

Mike pulls his phone out of his pocket with his stiff, pale fingers. Five twenty-two, two missed calls. Seven text messages.

This isn’t the first time he’s spent the night outdoors. Of course, it’s been awhile; he’s not coming down off a wicked high, so that’s weird, but there’s the familiar disoriented fuzz in his head, so maybe not so much.

The calls are both from Rachel, no surprise. The texts, too, variants on a theme; “What are you doing?” “Where are you?” “Are you coming home?” “Call me!”

He shoves the phone back into his jacket.

A couple of guys in purple NYU track pants jog by and don’t spare him a second glance.

A hot sort of butterfly feeling stirs in Mike’s stomach, not nausea but a close relative. He has to get home, that’s for sure; if he runs, right now, and has fantastic luck with the trains—though it stops closer to the apartment building, the bus is unreliable as hell at this hour (any hour, really)—he’ll make it back before Rachel wakes up. She won’t be happy, but that’s unavoidable by now.

Turning over and pushing himself to his feet, he takes a second to reorient and heads east; he’s farther north than he’d expected, but the sixty-eighth street station is only two blocks away.

His mind wanders as he runs.

Last night sucked.

How could Harvey do something like that? Going to Anita Gibbs for help was always going to end in disaster, and Harvey, in his twisted, arrogant, smooth-talking way, thought he’d be able to convince her to _help_ him? To help _Mike? How?_ And _why?_ Because she owes Harvey something? She doesn’t owe him jack shit, and even if, even _if_ Harvey could best her in a battle of wits, her own pride and disdain for him would never let her admit it.

_I was trying to help—_

Peddle it somewhere else, huh?

Mike leans back as he runs down the steps and swipes his card ( _$0.38 REMAINING_ ), looking down the tracks. He probably looks like a druggie, his eyes wild as he shuffles his feet.

The train’s not here yet; should’ve walked.

Fuck it, he’s not gonna let that $2.75 go to waste.

Sagging against the wall, he bites his tongue and tightens his abdominal muscles, but the fluttery feeling won’t go away. It’s not guilt at staying out all night, he knows that much; maybe he should’ve called home, but he needed to be alone and Rachel, good-hearted, well-intentioned Rachel, would’ve insisted he come back to her, insisted they work this out together, whatever “this” is. He doesn’t even know.

Bullshit.

It’s the same as it always is, the catalyst for everything.

If Harvey even agrees to see him again, it’ll be a miracle.

He thins his lips. No, it won’t. It’ll be expected. Of course Harvey will see him; Harvey will forgive him because Harvey always forgives him, which is exactly the problem. Harvey bails him out, Harvey solves his problems, Harvey takes him at his word.

His word.

_Stop messing with my life._

Mike hits his head against the tile.

Shit.

Maybe Harvey won’t forgive him this one.

The train rattles into the station.

No, it’s okay; this story was a tragedy from the very start.

\---

Sprinting the final stretch, Mike stumbles over his own feet when Rachel walks out the building’s front door. He should’ve known he wouldn’t make it before she left; five minutes early is ten minutes late and all that, and she’s nothing if not ambitious.

It only takes a moment for her to catch his eye, and she’s got to be either relieved or furious, but he can’t tell which from the pursing of her lips and slightly sideways bend of her posture. Either way, it’s best to get this over with.

“Rachel,” he says, slowing to a walk.

“Mike,” she replies, stopping in her tracks.

He doesn’t speak; she’s waiting for “I’m sorry,” that much is obvious, but he’s waiting for “Are you okay,” and doesn’t particularly feel like sacrificing so much ground.

“Where were you?” she asks, satisfying neither of them. He sighs and sticks his hands in his pockets.

“I had some stuff on my mind,” he says vaguely. “Something I had to get off my chest.”

If you love me, you’ll understand.

(Oh, come on now, that’s not fair.)

She nods tightly and looks away.

“I have to get to work,” she says, which isn’t meant as an accusation, or a taunt, but he hears the undercurrent all the same.

“Kick some ass,” he replies, and she smiles over a tiny laugh before she walks past him.

Walking into the lobby, he understands how accidentally wise he was to avoid coming back here last night. Rachel will be mad, probably, once she’s had some time to think, and they’ll have to talk it out when she gets home, but things would be a hundred thousand times worse the other way round. Spiteful words would have been hurled in angry tones, and violent gestures would have seemed to her so out of character…

It’s for the best.

Mike unlocks the apartment door and goes to the living room to collapse on the sofa.

Fuck, Harvey.

No. It needed to happen this way.

It hurts like hell, and the damage might be…irreparable, but it needed to happen this way. Going on as they were, pretending everything was normal, that the lie could carry on as usual would’ve blown up in their faces sooner or later and the wounds would’ve been much deeper, scars that would never heal no matter how well-intentioned the gashes that caused them.

_Stop messing with my life._

What was Harvey trying to accomplish?

Mike squeezes his eyes shut and pushes his fingertips up against his orbital rim, inducing a headache and pressing harder to make it worse.

_I was trying to…_

Yeah, well. The best laid plans of mice and men.

But he’s Harvey goddamn Specter, and he doesn’t do things half-assed.

“What the fuck were you thinking?”

His voice is muffled by his own palms, but it’s not important. The words are out there now, and it’ll be easier to repeat them a second time. (A third, a fourth, however many it takes.)

_I just need to know that much._

Tonight. Rachel should be leaving the office at about eight fifteen; he’ll head out at eight, they’ll just miss each other. But the cuts are still fresh, still raw and gaping, and maybe he should wait until tomorrow? Formulate a plan of attack?

No, no, no. Get it out of the way. Delay will just make the tension thicker, the silence more awkward, the confessions harder.

Tonight.

\---

A block out from the apartment, Mike’s phone rings, and he answers on autopilot.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Rachel chirps. “I was thinking we could go out for dinner tonight; I mean, the Thai place doesn’t just do delivery.”

“Or the sushi place,” he replies, then sucks in a breath with guilt only slightly exaggerated. “Oh, babe, I’d love to, but I’m following up on a lead from yesterday. Fitting me in after hours. Uh, rain check?”

“Oh,” she says, taken aback; “yeah, Mike, that’s—great. That’s so great, I hope it works out.”

Humming quietly, he smiles to himself. “Thanks, me too. I’ll see you when I get home.”

“Love you.”

“You too.”

He should feel worse about this, he thinks as he puts exactly two dollars and thirty-seven cents on his MetroCard (no receipt).

Well. He definitely won’t run into her.

So that’s something.

\---

The guard glowers at him when he breezes into the lobby of Pearson Specter Litt, and Mike slips into an elevator before he can demand to see identification or force him to sign the guest book. Tapping the button for the fiftieth floor, he hopes Harvey’s pulling a late night and tries to convince himself it’s more likely than not.

It is, it is. He’s here. He’s gotta be.

Mike walks quietly down the hall.

This is a bad idea (the voices whisper). He doesn’t want to see you, doesn’t want to talk. Doesn’t want to hear anything you have to say. (And what is that, anyway?)

Mike flinches.

He’ll listen.

(Oh god, please, please, listen.)

The light is on. Mike catches his breath.

After a minute (watching, waiting), he opens the door.

“Go home, Donna.”

Oh god.

Say something, say anything, say—

“I would, but, uh.”

Harvey looks up, his lips parted and his eyes wide, and he tightens his grip on his pen.

“Mike.”

Got it in one.

Mike puts his hands in his pockets; Harvey lays his on his desk.

“What are you doing here?”

Well, it’s like this…

Mike looks away and smiles, open-mouthed, trying not to laugh, or something worse.

“What the fuck were you thinking?”

Harvey sighs through gritted teeth. Wow, that was some kind of opener, Mike, great job.

“What do you think,” Harvey says, still too tired for this, and Mike didn’t come here looking for another confrontation, but how the hell is he supposed to answer that?

“What do you want me to _say_ _?”_ he asks. “Do you want me to say that I understand? That I just—believe that whatever you were doing was the right call because you were the one making it? That even though I’ve spent the last five years being the best goddamn lawyer, the best goddamn _person_ I could be, I know it’s all been shot to shit and I’m supposed to think there was something you could’ve done to magically change all that?”

The anger begins to bubble up again and he tries to stuff it back down—

“What do you want me to say, Harvey?” he begs. “ _What?_ ”

“This isn’t about what I want!” Harvey snaps.

Mike spins on his heel, his hands flying to his head and interlacing at the base of his skull.

Don’t do this to me, not right now.

“God, Harvey, it’s _always_ about what you want.”

That was mean, Mike. That was unfair.

Yeah, so? I deserve it.

Harvey shakes his head slowly, pressing his hands over his eyes.

“Not this time.” He takes a breath, somehow finding the humor in the irony of everything, everything so well-intentioned that turned out so poorly. “I thought I was helping you get your life back.”

His voice is broken in that special Harvey Specter way that doesn’t deviate from his normal tone except for the smallest hitch at the very end; Mike looks left and right for a glass of water, a bottle of Prozac, a cold compress, anything to bring him back to level, but the office is filled with paperwork and manila folders and not much else.

Mike sits in the client chair and rests his forearms in his lap.

“You didn’t want Gibbs to expunge my record,” he accuses. “Harvey, what were you asking for?”

Harvey laughs again; it’s still not funny.

“I wanted her to testify on your behalf.”

“It’s a little late for that.”

“Not to the judiciary.”

But then, who…

Oh.

Oh.

Oh, Harvey.

Mike leans back, his gaze softening.

“You were trying to help me get my license.”

Harvey spreads his hands and raises his eyebrows briefly, _you got me;_ there’s no more defense than that. He doesn’t really need one.

Well, fuck.

“Harvey, I… I’m sorry.”

Harvey smiles thinly.

“I get it, you were angry,” he excuses tersely, and Mike shakes his head.

“Yeah, I was, but I shouldn’t have come here and yelled at you like that. And I, I’m— God, Harvey, yesterday morning…”

Twenty-twenty hindsight, as they say.

Shifting in his seat, Mike thinks about getting up and then thinks better of it.

“I had to get out of this hole on my own,” he says, half explanation, half deduction. “I had to prove that I can handle myself. I haven’t had control of my own life in such a long time, I just had to show myself, and everyone else, that I can make those kinds of decisions.”

Do you see?

Harvey rests his chin on his laced fingers and looks at Mike; Mike tries not to fidget (be respectful).

“You’re a good man, Mike,” Harvey says eventually. “You’re a good man and you deserve to be able to have the opportunity to do something that makes you happy.”

Mike pushes his hand up over his face, over the top of his head.

“I should’ve trusted you.”

Harvey shrugs.

“I didn’t exactly give you a reason.”

“Harvey.” Mike levels him with a critical glare. “After everything we’ve been through, I shouldn’t _need_ a reason.”

Harvey smirks, but it has a sour twist to it.

“After everything we’ve been through, I’d think you’d want one.”

Oh, right.

All that stuff.

Mike shakes his head and buries his face in his hands; he hears a quick shuffling sound, like Harvey’s folded his arms on his desk, and then silence.

Forty-eight hours later, he looks up at Harvey through his fingers, and Harvey smiles wearily.

“Feel better?”

“Not really.”

Sighing, Harvey shoves some papers into his desk drawer and stands, loosening his tie.

“How about a drink?”

The thing is, Mike wants to. He would love to. He feels like he’s been waiting for that invitation his entire life (ignoring the fact that one of the first things Harvey did for him after prison was take him out to a bar).

The thing is, he can’t. They haven’t said everything they need to, and they’re not going to say it all tonight. If they start off down the path of least resistance, though, trying to build an empire on a foundation only half finished, there’s no telling when they’ll find their way back, _if_ they find their way back, and Mike doesn’t know if he can handle all this again. Doesn’t want to make Harvey try.

“How about tomorrow?” he asks.

Harvey drums his fingers against the edge of the desk and nods at the floor.

“Eight o’clock,” he says. “My place.”

So that’s how we’re gonna play this.

Mike stands and scratches his arm through three layers of fabric.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Harvey tsks through his teeth.

“Goodnight, Mike.”

Okay.

Okay.

\---

Mike unlocks the door slowly, opens it with care; it’s a nice gesture, he thinks. It doesn’t matter; the bedroom light is still on.

Rachel leans against the headboard with a book open against her knees, some trashy airport romance thing. She deserves a mindless distraction to lull her to sleep.

(Harvey would be reading briefs, probably.)

Mike smiles weakly, and Rachel smiles back.

“How’d it go?” she asks, and he loves her for not going in for the kill.

“Okay,” he says, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I’ve got another follow-up tomorrow night.”

He isn’t exactly sure why he’s perpetuating the charade, why he’s pretending this has nothing to do with anything; how he knows Harvey won’t let it slip. She smiles giddily and lays her book aside, turning toward him.

“Mike, that’s amazing,” she praises. “Is it at the clinic?”

Here we go.

“No,” he says, standing and shrugging out of his coat. “Listen, can we not talk about it tonight? It’s still pretty…up in the air, I don’t wanna jinx it.”

He doesn’t believe in jinxes and hopes she doesn’t know that.

(You bastard.)

Her face falls a little, but she nods all the same. “Okay,” she says, sliding down and dragging the covers up over her shoulder. “I’m glad it went well.”

He grins and gets into bed beside her, his t-shirt rucking up over his stomach.

“Me too.”

\---

Mike wakes at nine-thirty, a little offended that Rachel left without waking him to say goodbye; on the other hand, who knows how that would’ve turned out. It’s just as well.

By eleven, Mike has penned a long form draft of the speech he wants to deliver to Harvey tonight; every accusation, every question, every apology, every misunderstanding he can think of. It’s about twenty pages.

By two, Mike has trimmed his speech to a lean thirteen; by four, with a lot of soul-searching, it’s down to five.

On his way out the door at seven-thirty, he tosses it in the trash.

It was good practice, anyway.

It doesn’t take too long to walk to Harvey’s, and he’s wearing the right coat this time. The wind slices across his face, burns his ears and under his eyes, but he’s wearing the right coat.

It’s the little things that make the biggest difference.

That’s not true, but they help a little, so.

Harvey’s building is identifiable from about two blocks away; Mike checks his watch. He’s five minutes early.

That’s good enough.

The doorman’s name is Tom, he thinks, smiling his greeting as he stops at the front desk to be called up. Tom (he thinks) smiles back and looks down at a notebook Mike can’t read from this side.

“Mister Specter is expecting you, sir.”

Mike shuffles back a couple of inches.

“Shall I let him know you’re on your way?”

Mike nods.

“Uh.” He clears his throat and tells himself not to be so damn nervous. “Thanks, yeah.”

This elevator is faster than the one at PSL. Mike shouldn’t be surprised (but he is, a little) when he knocks on the door and Harvey meets him immediately, so fast that he must have been waiting on the other side, with a calculating stare and a forced relaxation to his bearing.

Harvey nods, stepping back, and Mike follows him inside and down the hall to the right.

“Hey,” he says awkwardly.

That’s not quite what he’d prepared, he doesn’t think.

“Mike,” Harvey returns as they come to rest in the living room. “Drink?”

Mike smiles and shakes his head. “No. Thanks.”

Harvey waves his hand, a “suit yourself” gesture, and Mike sits hesitantly on the couch.

So much later that Mike stops keeping track, Harvey clears his throat and sits in the chair beside him.

“It’s been a rough couple of months,” he says, and Mike laughs uncomfortably.

They’ve never had this much trouble before.

Mike draws a sharp breath and claps his hands down on his knees.

“Look, Harvey,” he says to the hardwood, “I shouldn’t’ve said what I did, I shouldn’t’ve rushed you at the office like that, but, just—you gotta know what I’m dealing with here.”

He looks up then, easily meeting Harvey’s gaze and forcing himself to hold it. No surprise, Harvey doesn’t look away either, and he’s not scowling, quite, but he isn’t happy about this.

(That’s fair.)

“I needed you, Mike,” Harvey implores. “I needed you and I thought you were gonna be there, and you weren’t.”

“You can’t just—”

“I get that you’re angry,” Harvey carries on, “and you’re trying to figure out who you are, because prison changes you whether you like it or not. But Mike…”

Oh, no no no no no. He’s really fucked it up this time.

Harvey sighs a quick breath, ducking his head and then raising it to speak again.

“I tried to help you get your license because I thought that’s what you wanted.” He shrugs, and Mike bites his tongue. “It was never about controlling you, or making you think you owed me, alright? I don’t— I would never do that to you.”

I know, I know.

(He does, really.)

Mike folds his hands together and presses his thumbs to his forehead.

“Father Walker gave me a job,” he says, somewhat tangentially, but Harvey doesn’t point it out. “Substitute teacher. I didn’t know how long it would last—two weeks, he said, but with subs, who knows, right? But it was something.”

“I heard,” Harvey hedges, and Mike furrows his brow.

“Rachel was bragging.”

That’s sweet.

Mike clears his throat and lowers his hands to his lap.

“I don’t even know if I wanted to do it,” he admits. “But I was so excited to get to be somewhere where nobody knew about me, nobody knew about what I’d done and where I’d been…and then I turned around and there was my mugshot, right on the desk, and I realized.” It hurts to smile this time, hurts in the tightness of his lips and the sardonic narrowing of his eyes.

“It doesn’t matter how hard I try or how good my intentions are.” He shakes his head and his smile widens. “I’ll always be that guy. That guy who went to prison.”

“Sure, to some people.”

Wait, what?

Harvey shrugs, as if somehow this is just irrelevant trivia.

“There are people out there who won’t give a shit,” he says, “and there are people who will see what happened and see the truth, and they’ll respect you for what you did, and you know what they’ll say when you ask them for a job? They’ll say ‘Hell yeah I want that kind of loyalty on my team. Hell yeah I want that kind of selflessness, hell yeah I want Mike Ross in my corner.’ And you know why?”

(It’s all pandering, it’s all fluff and ego-soothing bullshit, he just wants you to shut up and calm down.)

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Harvey grins, not much of a put-on.

“Because they’ll see what I saw when I hired you: A smart guy who’s going places as soon as he can get his foot in the door. And they’ll wanna be a part of that, just like I did.”

_This is why you’re my favorite._

Mike grins despite himself.

“You’ve been waiting to say that to me, haven’t you?”

“Only for a couple months.”

Then Mike looks up, and their smiling eyes meet, and this, this is what he’s been missing. This is why he went to prison, why he derailed the most awesome, the most fun, the most interesting life he ever could’ve led. Because after all the lies, all the tricks and schemes and games, Harvey is in _his_ corner; Harvey has his back no matter what, and he may throw away a whole lot of good things, but there’s no way he’s ever going to throw away this one.

“Look, Mike,” Harvey says as he leans over the coffee table and drops his hands between his knees. “Anyone who doesn’t know you is gonna make a decision about what happened and they’re probably gonna stick to it, because that’s how they survive. By their convictions. And most of those decisions are going to be that you’re just a convicted criminal, you’re that guy who has to check ‘Yes’ on his job application.”

I know, I know.

Mike leans back and Harvey leans forward; it’s a pretty appropriate metaphor, for the time being.

“But the things is,” Harvey goes on, “those people think small. They live down here.” He lowers his hand below the seat cushions, and Mike covers his mouth to keep from laughing.

“You and me,” Harvey says, “we live up here.”

Suddenly it isn’t funny anymore. Not at all.

Mike lowers his hand, biting his tongue, and wonders where to go from here.

Where else?

He takes a breath to steel himself and looks Harvey straight in the eye.

“I’m sorry.”

Harvey holds his gaze for a minute in silence and in stillness.

He nods once, slowly, and Mike holds his breath.

It takes another few seconds, but then:

“So how about that drink?”

Yeah.

They’re gonna be alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “The rest is silence.” _Hamlet_ (5.2.17)  
>  “If you are five minutes early, you are already ten minutes late.” Vince Lombardi
> 
> TPTB may be ignoring it, but I couldn't let Mike out of prison without _some_ psychological trauma...and anxiety fit really well with the direction of this narrative, so there you go, Mike has mild anxiety.
> 
> Fic title from "Lift" by Poets of the Fall (2005). Chapter titles from "Misfits" by Shinedown (2015).


	2. the two of us intertwined

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case it's not clear, this chapter begins a few days after the end of the previous one. Maybe like a week.

Harvey stares contemplatively into his scotch and tilts the glass to the left.

“Donna put me on a flight to Boston tomorrow,” he says. “Eight A.M.”

“That’s funny,” Mike returns, picking up his own glass and excessively furrowing his brow. “I didn’t know you and Marcus had made plans, and there can’t be anyone else worth flying out there to see.”

Harvey smiles to himself. He’s missed this.

“She knows I’m having trouble dealing with Louis for this whole managing partner thing,” he explains vaguely, “and she thinks I’ll act a lot more rationally if I sort shit out with my mother first.”

Mike tips his glass.

“Ah.”

He doesn’t seem to be buying it. He’s pretty smart, after all.

“It’s not the first time she’s done this,” Harvey says, taking a sip. “For my father’s funeral, she did the same thing, told me I’d regret it for the rest of my life if I didn’t go.”

Humming, Mike nods thoughtfully at his drink. “Was she right?”

“Probably.” Harvey stands and walks slowly behind his chair, feeling suddenly restless at the memory. “But that time was about him.”

Mike makes another noise, just a quiet “yes I’m paying attention,” and Harvey takes another drink. It’s nice to be able to talk to someone about this; of course Mike, sweet young Mike, is probably doing all he can to refrain from recommending that Harvey reconcile with his family ASAP because god, Harvey, you never know when something’s going to just come along out of fucking nowhere and take away your entire life and everything you’ve ever held dear.

“Do you want to go?” Mike asks instead, looking up at him.

Mike never does do the expected thing when it really counts.

Funnily enough, though, even in the privacy of his own mind, Harvey hasn’t really put it in those terms. According to Donna, who tends to be more or less right about these sorts of things, he needs to go, so every question to himself has had the word “should” in it somewhere.

He’s missed this.

“I want to stop being angry,” Harvey says after a beat. “I want to be able to talk to my brother without having to worry about whether she’ll come up in conversation.”

Mike doesn’t respond yet, watching with those big blue eyes of his and waiting for the rest he knows is coming. It is, it is; he just needs another minute.

“I want to finish this chapter,” Harvey decides then. “However it turns out, I want it to be done, and if it turns out for the best…this would be a good time.”

Finishing his drink, Mike smiles and puts his glass on the coffee table.

“You want some backup?”

Harvey couldn’t possibly have heard what he thinks he just heard. Mike wouldn’t offer to take a spontaneous trip away from rebuilding his life with his fiancée to stand by as Harvey’s second. Mike wouldn’t just _do that._ Nobody would just _do that._ Not even for him. Maybe especially not for him.

Mike would.

Grinning, nodding at his scotch, Harvey steps back around the chair and sits, downing the rest of the drink and balancing the glass delicately on his fingertips.

“I think I’d like that very much.”

\---

Mike sits on the edge of the bed, clenching and unclenching his fingers in the fabric of the plush hotel comforter as he hunches his shoulders forward, prepared to leap into action.

“I’ll come with you if you want me to.”

It’s a tempting offer, really it is. On the other hand, the sooner he can finish this, the better, and if he meets his mother for the first time in seven years with Mike by his side, the conversation will derail quickly and probably irrevocably; he can’t waste this opportunity. Harvey shakes his head.

“I know you will,” he says. “And thanks, but it’s better this way; go out on the town, find a library or a casino or a herd of stray cats to spend your time on.”

“Clowder.”

Harvey pauses on his way to the door, already reaching for the knob.

“What?”

“A group of cats,” Mike explains, “it’s called a clowder. Or a glaring.”

Harvey wants badly to bring him along. What does he think he’s doing? What’s changed in seven years? Nothing; it’s just been more time for their resentments to fester, to take root and infiltrate where they might not have done before. This is stupid, this is a stupid idea.

He looks Mike in the eye and remembers why he’s here.

_You’re not alone anymore._

No. Haven’t been for a long time, in fact.

“I’ll keep my cell on,” Mike says softly, and Harvey chuckles.

“Me too.”

Out in the hall, he listens to the door close with a click and takes a breath, puffing his chest up, and then sighs out through his nose.

He can do this.

\---

Something about this doesn’t feel right.

Harvey paces the interior of the elevator—too small for any real distance, but he does alright, considering—and rubs his hand over his mouth. Dinner with his mother tomorrow, it’s what he wanted, isn’t it? It’s what he came here for. A chance to talk, to clear the air. To “connect,” whatever the fuck that means.

So why does it feel so _dangerous?_

Fumbling with his key card, he manages to jam it into the lock, then forces himself to insert it more sedately when the door flashes a red light at him. Mike is sitting on the bed closest to the door—his, apparently—with his laptop balanced on his knees, but he puts it aside and swings his feet to the floor the moment Harvey enters.

“How’d it go?”

Harvey shakes his head. There’s really no rational response to that.

Might as well give into it.

“I want you to meet someone.”

\---

Mike looks speculatively at the reasonably elegant (nice enough) building—restaurant—that Harvey leads him toward. He’s probably suspicious; he’s got the right.

“Your brother’s place?”

That shouldn’t have been surprising.

“You mind?” Harvey asks as they draw near, and Mike shakes his head.

“’Course not, I’d be crazy to pass on this opportunity.”

“Don’t be a smartass.”

He’s said it a hundred times before if he’s said it once, but this time… Well. Mike gets it. Mike knows.

There’s Marcus, talking to someone by the kitchen; looks like the maître d', maybe. Harvey puts on the most sincere smile he can muster and strides forward with ease (why is this so hard).

“Hey,” he calls, “who do you have to know around here to get a good table?”

Marcus turns abruptly, his immediate shock giving way to a disbelieving grin. “Jesus Christ,” he says, recovering quickly and reaching out for a hug. “Do my eyes deceive me, or do you look just like my big brother, only older, fatter, and douchier?”

“I appreciate you noticing,” Harvey says as he slaps his brother on the back. “I put in a lot of effort.”

“Seriously, Harvey,” Marcus says as they break apart, “why are you here?”

Harvey thinks about how to answer in a way that doesn’t feel profoundly dishonest; deception, even little lies by omission, are for the workplace, not for family. Not for this. He shrugs shallowly and looks over Marcus’s shoulder to the kitchens.

“I thought it was a good time to make my peace with Mom,” he admits, watching out of the corner of his eye to judge his brother’s reaction.

Marcus’s attention has been drawn to the space behind Harvey, though, and Harvey turns; off to the side, hands clasped behind his back, Mike stands patiently.

Right. Of course.

“Marcus, this is Mike Ross,” he introduces as he claps his hand down on Mike’s shoulder. “My—colleague.”

Marcus doesn’t look like he’s buying the whole of it, his smile hardening and his eyes narrowed from the outer corners.

“You need your work friends to mend fences with your family?” he asks, the question loaded with judgments although his tone is flippant. Harvey bites back a sharp retort and Mike steps forward, sticking his hand out to shake.

“Don’t judge him too harshly,” he says, “I insisted; we’re under a lot of pressure at the firm right now and if our best closer is going to be out of the city for a couple days, someone’s gotta make sure he’s not slacking off too much. I’ll take ten minutes a day if I can get it.”

Harvey watches Marcus edge closer to accepting that it’s the truth as his liking, or potential liking, for Mike takes a nosedive. It’s a subtle thing, mostly around the mouth.

“Nice to meet you, Mike,” Marcus says, sticking out his hand without taking Mike’s; Mike reaches over the last of the space to meet the gesture, and his returning smile has a funny brittleness to it. He knows the score.

“Likewise.”

The forced joviality doesn’t last a second after they drop their grips; Mike puts that cocky smirk back on his face and Harvey sort of wants to hug him, but that would only raise more questions that he doesn’t feel like answering right now. Or ever.

“I saw Mom earlier today,” he says instead. “Actually I went to see her, at the college, and we’re having dinner here tomorrow night. I figured I’d give you a heads up.”

Marcus’s smile relaxes as though some secret wish he’s always had has been unexpectedly granted. “Harvey, that's great,” he gushes, effectively ignoring Mike’s presence and putting a little of the tension back into Harvey’s neck and shoulders. “I’ll make sure you have a table ready.” The tail end of the sentence fades away under his widened smile and he glances to Mike and then back to Harvey. “I’d invite you to stay at ours, but I’m not sure we have room for you both.”

Yeah. Yeah, well.

Harvey looks back at Mike, who raises his eyebrows querulously; this is Harvey’s call.

“Thanks,” he drawls, “but Mike’s right. We oughta stay together.”

Marcus thins his lips and nods, giving Harvey an uncomfortable half hug.

“Don’t be a stranger.”

Maybe it’ll all work out.

(What a tender world that would be.)

\---

The shadows cast under the streetlamps are red, blurred and dark, flickering and incandescent; every line along the horizon is indistinct, every storefront a mess of curly lines made to look like words and reflecting panes meant to show off the very wares they conceal. Harvey storms on with his fists clenched, fury roiling in his gut, searing into his brain.

_I have been trying to tell you I’m sorry about it for twenty years._

Bullshit.

This was a mistake, all of it.

Buildings catch fire as he passes, a trail of ash blowing in his wake.

 _Leave,_ she’d challenged him. Play to your strengths and go. _That’s what you do best._

The worst thing would be to prove her right.

He rams the key card into the card reader and slams the door behind him; Mike startles, but he’s off the bed in an instant, rushing to Harvey's side with his hands raised—not to stem, not to sooth, but to offer help, to offer…whatever.

Mike is still here. Mike hasn’t left.

“Harvey, what happened?”

Thank god for Mike.

Harvey sits on the bed closest to the door—Mike’s bed—and presses his palm to his forehead, panting at the end of a marathon and forcing himself not to be overcome by it (all of it).

“Harvey.”

He’ll tell him.

He will.

Harvey shakes his head.

“She brought her boyfriend to his funeral.”

Mike kneels carefully on the floor. He rests his hand on Harvey’s knee.

Harvey laughs.

“She brought her boyfriend to his _funeral,_ and she has the guts to tell me _I’m_ self-absorbed? She thinks _I_ need to be forgiven?”

Mike waits.

(Thank god for Mike.)

Harvey shakes his head.

“This was a mistake. This was a mistake, I have to go back to New York.”

Mike bites his lip.

(God dammit, he’s right, isn’t he?)

“Right now?” he asks, and Harvey sighs.

No, not right now.

“I have to tell Marcus.”

Mike pats his leg once.

“You want me to come with you?”

He shouldn’t.

It’s a bad idea.

This is a family affair.

Harvey sighs through his teeth.

_You're not the only one who got more family out of this deal._

He meant it then, too.

\---

Harvey knocks his knuckles against the door as Mike shuffles his feet; no one answers, and he rings the bell. He’s never liked doorbells; too passive. No sense in giving away the upper hand.

Voices sound inside—Marcus and Katie—laughing at some joke that he probably wouldn’t find very funny at the moment, and Marcus opens the door with a giddy little grin on his face that he stops trying to quash when he sees who’s visiting.

“Harvey, what a surprise,” he says, stepping back to let him in and pausing only slightly when he sees Mike. “And…Mike, it’s nice to see you.”

Bullshit.

They step inside and don’t follow Marcus when he tries to lead them out of the foyer. Mike leans back against the door.

“We’re leaving,” Harvey announces.

Still smiling, Katie emerges from the kitchen; her face falls the moment she lays eyes on Marcus’s wounded expression.

“You’re leaving?” Marcus mimics. “You just got here.”

“It’s not working out.”

Wringing his hands, Marcus looks away as though it’ll help him gather his thoughts; it’s uncomfortable to see him like this, but then, Harvey’s last concrete memory of him is rather drunken, so maybe it’s not too out of line.

“So what am I supposed to tell the kids in the morning?” Marcus asks then, a last-ditch effort, desperation Harvey is ashamed to be associated with.

“You tell them we've got business back in New York,” he snaps, beginning to lose his patience.

“You want me to lie for you?” Marcus jeers, and okay, if we’re gonna play, then come on, let’s play.

“She had the nerve to say that I owed her an apology,” Harvey argues, and Katie steps forward as if to cut in when a knock sounds at the door (god dammit); Mike steps away, coming to Harvey’s side.

Bobby.

“You son of a bitch.”

First words out of his mouth. Harvey glowers, and Mike doesn’t even know this asshole but his hackles raise, his fingers clenching into fists before he can relax them. Bobby paces forward, invading Harvey’s space, but who’s the bigger man here, who’s got control of the room? The focus of everyone’s attention, that’s who, the guy who’s taken the upper hand by force.

Harvey stands his ground.

“You think you can just walk into our lives and—and rip open old wounds?” Bobby snarls, jabbing his finger into Harvey’s sternum.

You bastard, whose wounds are you talking about? Shoving yourself into this family, into this mess to pick up all the filthy scraps you can, you festering bacteria.

“Get the hell out of my face,” Harvey growls instead, “before I do something that you’ll regret.”

Consider it fair warning.

It’s all over his reddening face that Bobby’s not gonna take the hint.

“You already did something I regret by talking to your mother the way you did,” he snaps, shoving his chest forward. What, you think you’re some kind of big man, you fucker?

“That woman gave up the right to be called my mother when she got together with you behind my father's back.”

Hear that, Mike? The coup d’état. That’s about the size of it. Go on now, genius, put the pieces together, you’ve got them all, it’s not that hard.

“Well, maybe you don't consider her to be your mother,” Bobby retorts, and oh right, there’s still this to deal with, “but she's my wife, and if anyone else spoke to her the way you did, they'd be on the floor right now.”

“You want to take a swing at me?”

Marcus jolts forward to come between them, reaching his arms out, but—

“Harvey.”

It’s Mike who gets there first, the sound of his voice reigning Harvey in, backing him down far more effectively than any physical restraint. He wants to hit Bobby, wants to beat him within an inch of his fucking life, but…no. No, not right now.

When Harvey steels himself, drawing back, Bobby shakes his head, rubbing his hand across his mouth to smother a righteous chuckle.

“You know,” he taunts, “I came here to tell you I've never seen your mother more excited than when she was heading out to have dinner with you. She was finally gonna get to reconnect with her son.”

Mike puts his arm around Harvey’s back, laying his hand on his bicep and angling them toward the door; he’s right, they don’t need to put up with this shit.

“And then you pulled the rug out from underneath her. You took that excitement away.”

Mike’s hand tightens on his arm, but Harvey knows that cadence, that pressure; now Harvey is the one keeping Mike from taking a swing. They’re quite a pair.

“So, when you leave this time,” Bobby goes on, the sanctimonious prick, “just stay gone, because the truth is, this family works better without you.”

Harvey won’t admit that he agrees.

Then again, it goes both ways.

\---

Harvey lies awake, staring at the ceiling, curling his fists in the comforter and tucking it up under his chin. This is a little boring, but it isn’t so bad; he wishes he were tired, but maybe it’s better this way.

The red display of the digital clock makes his peripheral vision glow along the bottom edge.

At four fourteen, the blankets in the next bed shift and shuffle, and the mattress dips beside him.

Mike lays his hand on Harvey’s shoulder, and he wishes he were tired.

But it’s better this way.

\---

“You sure about this?”

Not entirely, no.

“I can’t just leave it like that.”

Mike sets his jaw, hardens his gaze; he’ll go along with this because it’s what Harvey wants, and that’s why he’s here, but he doesn’t like it.

That’s okay. He doesn’t have to.

Marcus opens the door without need for the bell this time.

Harvey tries to smile.

“Hey.”

Marcus backs away to let them in; this time he’s the one keeping them in the foyer.

“You're still here,” he says as though it’s something to be suspicious of.

“Our flight isn't for another two hours,” Harvey explains. He knows why he’s here, he thinks, but not really what to do about it.

“Listen, Harvey,” Marcus begins a long speech, “about what Bobby said last night—”

“You don't need to make excuses for him,” Harvey interrupts. He’s sure Marcus spent a long time deciding what to say, but after everything, it’s too much effort to indulge him.

“Oh,” Marcus notes, “I'm not making excuses.”

What?

Maybe he should’ve just let him go on.

“I'm telling you he had every right to say what he said to you.”

“I don't believe this,” Harvey mutters; Mike puts his hand on Harvey’s shoulder for just a second, and it helps (it does). “You're on his side now?”

“The only side I'm on,” Marcus lectures, “is my family's—the family that you've never been a part of.”

“Marcus, come on,” Harvey tries to cut in at the same time he hears Mike’s indignant little “Hey,” but Marcus ignores them both.

“Do you know what it's like to tell a five year old why Grandma and Uncle Harvey can't be in the same room together?” he rants. “Because that's the position you put me in year after year. There's a whole _life_ going on here that you're not even a part of.”

“ _Hey,_ ” Mike says a little louder, and this time Marcus does hear it, glaring at Mike over Harvey’s shoulder, trying to intimidate him as if the kid’s never spent weeks locked up with a psychopath.

“Get out of here, Junior,” Marcus snaps. “This is family business, okay, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

There are those red flashes again; Harvey wants to leap to Mike’s defense, to throw himself in the line of fire, but he doesn’t know how, doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how not to make it worse (if that’s even possible).

“Oh, I don’t?” Mike snaps back, lurching forward so he and Harvey stand abreast (now subbing in for Harvey Specter…). “I know that the last time you and your brother spoke, you were out on your ass with gambling debts and begging Harvey for money he didn’t have so you could throw the dice on some restauranteur fantasy.”

“Harvey took a chance on me because we’re family,” Marcus retorts, “and family is supposed to stick by each other, which is something he seems to have forgotten up on his ivory tower in the big city.”

Harvey wants to interrupt, wants to set the record straight, but he looks three steps ahead to Marcus accusing him of letting his job run his life and doesn’t know if he can defend himself.

Good thing he doesn’t have to.

“Like any of you have stuck by him?” Mike counters. “You came to him when you needed something from him and now, now that you think you’ve finally made something of yourself, you just sit back and wait for him to come running, begging you to let him apologize.”

“I _have_ made something of myself!”

“I don’t give a shit!”

Harvey should come to his brother’s defense, should explain that things aren’t as bad as Mike is making them seem, that he doesn’t care about the money anymore, that he would do it again in a heartbeat.

The thing is, though.

“You wanna be a family?” Mike rants (he’s on a roll now, Harvey knows that tone). “You want to call this man your brother? Well then how about you stop taking him for granted, stop trying to blame him for all your fucking problems, and admit that he’s done more for you than you had any right to expect and he’s never asked for anything in return?”

“I didn’t see him around here when I got sick again!”

Wait, what?

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Harvey asks, unable to decide whether he should be hurt or offended that he didn’t know.

“Why would I?” Marcus asks rhetorically, sensing an opportunity for higher ground and scrambling after it. “So you could tell me you were too busy? You’d love to come help out but you’ve got just too much going on at the office?”

“Don’t even _pretend_ that’s what this is about,” Mike snarls, and then Marcus turns on him, too.

“You’re right,” he admits, “it isn’t. It’s about Harvey holding onto his little grudges, pretending he can still be an immature kid whenever he comes back here and get away with keeping his own mother at arm’s length because he never figured out how to grow up and stop being mad at her for something that happened almost thirty years ago when she has done _everything_ in her power to be there for me, and Katie, and our kids when we needed her. She and Bobby both, and you know what Harvey, they’re more family to us than you _ever_ were.”

It cuts deep, as Marcus must have known it would. Harvey knows what he’s missed, knows it’s more than he could ever imagine, and it’s agonizing that all those moments are gone forever, to think that maybe if he had just _said_ something, or _done_ something, or _anything,_ this could all have been avoided. Marcus would have been able to call him and he could’ve taken care of everything, maybe, back when everything was alright and no one was fresh out of prison or trying desperately to rebuild their fractured firm or wondering if anything was ever going to be okay ever again.

“Are you kidding me?” Mike enunciates after a beat. “You’re seriously trying to tell me that because no one bothered to tell Harvey that you had a relapse, he should forgive your mom for forcing him to keep her long-standing, marriage-ending affair a secret and then walking out on her family, her _children,_ when he was only sixteen years old. That’s what you’re saying, right, I’m—I’m not misunderstanding you?”

No one has ever laid it out in those terms, and Harvey doesn’t know quite what to think. Is it possible this isn’t all his fault? That there are people who will make it their _business_ to defend him, even in places where he should be alone? (Who should be alone with their _family,_ though, seriously.)

Mike, Mike, it’s always been Mike.

Marcus stares at him aghast, either horrified at the accusation or unable to mount an argument against the cold logic, or both, and Harvey is unsettled to find that he doesn’t much care to hear a retort.

Mike waits.

Marcus shakes his head in disbelief, and Mike waits.

“Do you have any idea what it’s done to her?” Marcus asks Harvey then, a clumsy shift in tactic that would never fly in a real negotiation (Harvey would wipe the floor with him). “How much it hurts her to know that you’re out there, doing your thing, hitting all these major milestones, and not giving a damn about her. Do you know how awful it is to live like that?”

Mike looks keenly between Marcus and Harvey, and Harvey frowns.

“Did you guys rehearse this shit?” he mocks. “That’s almost exactly the line she fed me at dinner last night. I’ll tell you what, Marcus, I didn’t believe it then, I don’t believe it now, and if that’s all you’re bringing to the table, then I think we’re done here.”

Marcus’s baffled stare speaks volumes; he hasn’t been caught out, he isn’t willing to empathize enough for that, but he’s been wronged, he’s been attacked, he’s been betrayed. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

You’re telling me.

“Get out of my house, Harvey,” Marcus says, and it’s funny how he thinks he can boss them around. “Get out of my house and don’t think you’ll be welcome back.”

It’ll hurt later, it’ll hurt badly, but right now, it’s the best thing he could’ve said.

Putting his hand at the small of Mike’s back, Harvey ushers him out the door slowly enough that Marcus can throw out whatever goodbye he’s sitting on before they’re gone.

The door slams.

Well alright then.

Throwing his shoulders back, standing up straight and tall, Harvey finishes his sigh on a smile; the air feels clearer, crisper, lighter, and it may be shitty that it ended this way, but at least it’s done. The chapter is closed, the end.

Mike watches. Mike waits.

Harvey starts down the walk, and Mike follows.

“Our flight’s in an hour and a half,” he says when Mike catches up.

“I know.” Mike makes a hesitant noise and fumbles with his hands.

“Do you want to say goodbye to your mom?”

They stop at the crosswalk and Harvey puts his hands into his pockets.

How would that turn out? What more is there to say?

There’s nothing he wants to apologize for.

“Bobby’ll tell her,” he dismisses.

They walk another block closer to the hotel, and Mike fidgets with the hem of his jacket.

“You don’t have to forgive her.”

In the middle of the sidewalk, Harvey stops short; stumbling a step too far, Mike turns to face him contritely.

“I mean you can if you want to,” he ventures, “but…do you? Want to?”

_You don’t have to._

Harvey looks Mike right in the eye, right down to all the betrayal, the hurt and the anger and the chances stolen from him by people looking to use his gifts for themselves and then throw him away. He sees the kid who learned to grow up on a swerving road, who learned early on that even your best friends can’t always be trusted to do what’s right, and who still wants to believe with all his heart and soul that somewhere out there in the world, there are good people, people worth protecting when they can’t protect themselves, or even when they can.

Thank god for Mike.

“Harvey?”

_Thank god for Mike._

It’s a little bit of an out-of-body experience, what happens next; he hears the scene dictated in third person as he holds Mike’s wrist, leaning forward to bridge the gap, and kisses him, a determined press of his lips not intended to move any further. Mike gives into it at once, pliant and accepting until he freezes and Harvey hears the narrator warning him to back away.

Shit.

He drops Mike’s wrist and doesn’t speak (he should, though, he really should).

_Shut up._

(He should say he’s sorry.)

_Shut up._

(Mike doesn’t look disgusted, or afraid, and he’s so confused that it paralyzes him.)

_SHUT UP._

“Mike, I…”

Mike catches his elbow and his gaze.

“Don’t fuck with me, Harvey.”

(So there’s a chance, he muses. Funny there hadn’t been any signs of a troubled home life; then again, what is this trip if not a cry for help?)

_SHUT. UP._

He doesn’t smile; he shakes his head once, about ten degrees to the left.

“I’m not.”

Mike studies him in that way he does, when he’s pinpointing a weakness and preparing to use it to trick his competition into double-crossing themselves; it’s not a pleasant thing, but if that’s how he needs to handle it, Harvey will let him.

Then Mike nods, mostly for himself, and lowers his hand.

Okay.

“This is a bad idea.”

(He’s trying to smother a grin as he says it.) Harvey laughs abruptly and starts walking.

“Forget it, we’ve gotta get to the airport.”

“Hey, _hey—_ ”

Reaching out, Mike grabs his shoulder and pulls him back; Harvey manages to catch himself and refrain from rolling his eyes (what are you, twelve?) and allows Mike to turn him around again, meeting his sincere expression warily.

Mike takes about five seconds to think about what he’s going to say before he says it.

“I don’t want you to do something you’ll regret tomorrow. You can’t—you can’t do that to me.”

Is this really happening?

“I’m not the one who should be worried about having regrets.”

Mike winces, because it’s true, and he tips his face down to the ground, collecting himself.

“Alright look,” he says firmly, lifting his head back up and there’s that fire Harvey’s been missing, that arrogant determination. “When we get back to New York, if you take a day to recover from this trip, and you get settled back into your life, and tomorrow night, you still think this is—worth doing, then…come to my apartment, and we’ll talk.”

That’s fair.

Harvey nods, and they make it all the way back to the hotel in radio silence. The shuttle to the airport is much the same, except this time there’s a pair of teenage girls sitting behind them chattering nervously about their first solo flight. They won’t shut up, so Harvey stares out the window and tries to focus on the colors.

Flying from Logan to LaGuardia takes just over two hours; Harvey spends the front half convincing himself that it was the right move to leave without trying to talk to his mother again, and the back half begrudgingly admitting that this is exactly why Mike was right to insist they take some time apart to think before they pursue…anything. A “relationship.”

A relationship.

Fuck, this is gonna be complicated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would be remiss in not mentioning my saving graces when writing revisionist fic: [The Hungry Novelist](https://hungrynovelist.wordpress.com/2015/03/10/suits-recap-season-4-episode-16-season-finale-not-just-a-pretty-face/) for _Suits_ episode recaps (specifically s04e16) and [Springfield! Springfield!](http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/) for scripts (of, like, everything). They're fantastic.
> 
> Anyway I hate Harvey's family.


	3. after all we never played by the rules

Dumping his bag beside the sofa, Mike collapses into the cushions and drops his face into his hands.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

Of course, only in the very back of his mind, in the very wildest of fantasies did it happen at all, but even then…not like this.

“Mike?”

This is why.

He raises his head with a grin that probably looks as weak as it feels.

“Hey.”

It’s late; he doesn’t know what time, exactly, but late enough that it’s reasonable Rachel might have just gotten home. She moves slowly to sit beside him; he’s not a wild animal preparing to flee, there’s no need to be so cautious.

Of course, what does it mean that she feels the need to act that way?

She folds her hands in her lap and furrows her brow, smiling nervously.

“How was Boston?”

How was Boston.

How _was_ Boston?

Mike leans back and runs his hand through his hair. No lies, no half-truths, no runaround; not this time, not right now. Not with what’s coming.

“A total shit show,” he says. “Harvey’s family is nuts.”

“I’m sorry,” she offers. She keeps her hands to herself. “Is he okay?”

The corner of his mouth quirks in an ironic little smirk. “He handled himself.”

She smiles and hums softly.

“Mike, why didn’t you tell me you were going?”

“I did tell you.”

She breathes a laugh and looks down at her hands. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

True.

“It happened pretty fast,” he explains, which isn’t much of an explanation. “He said he was going and I just… I know a little about his family, I knew it wasn’t a good idea for him to go alone.”

“And you were the best person to go with him?” she asks; it should be an accusation, she has every right to phrase it as an accusation. It isn’t, but it should be.

“Who else would have gone?” he replies, trying to fend off the inevitable. She shrugs, and he wonders if she knows what he’s doing, if she senses that there’s something he’s not telling her. He’s being so obvious, she must; she’s a kind woman, letting him get to it at his own pace.

“Donna,” she points out, the obvious answer.

“I don’t think she was the right person for this one,” he says, and she nods; she didn’t _really_ think it was an option. If it was going to be anyone, it had to be Mike.

“Mike,” she murmurs, “do you want to get married?”

He startles, looking over at her abruptly. “Yeah, of course I do.”

Wow, so convincing.

He bites his tongue and she shakes her head.

“Do you want to get married to me?”

There it is.

He doesn’t respond nearly fast enough. Rachel shifts in her seat, angling herself away from Mike to sit parallel to him, and slides her hands under her thighs.

“I was thinking, while you were away,” she says, and he shifts his gaze sideways to her; she doesn’t seem to be paying attention to him. That’s fine.

“I was thinking,” she goes on, “that you’re my best friend, and you support me when I go after the things I want, and I love you very much.”

She’s not making this easy, that’s for sure. He has just about zero space to complain.

“And I was thinking,” she summarizes, “that while you were gone, I was so focused on my work at school, and the firm, and the Bar, that I wasn’t really thinking about you. And when my fiancé spontaneously goes out of town for two days with his old boss to help him deal with his insane family, maybe I should spend more than the two seconds between falling into bed and falling asleep wondering how he’s doing. And I was thinking…maybe all that means that…we’d be better off staying just friends for right now.”

Immediately, he twists around to face her, fumbling for a response. Should he protest? Try to defend himself? Acquiesce? Or—or—or…

Or what.

“I want to make you happy,” he says, altogether pretty pathetically, and she runs her fingers back through her hair, brushing it out of her face.

“I know,” she says. “And thank you. For that, and for everything else you’ve done for me; you’re the best friend I could’ve asked for, and the best fiancé.”

“No I’m not,” he interrupts indignantly; she seems startled. “Rachel, I walked out on our wedding—I literally _walked out on our wedding_ to go to prison.”

“Yeah, _for me,_ ” she retorts. “To make me happy, remember? To keep me safe.” She sighs irately; she’s trying to do the right thing here, why isn’t it working? (Stop being difficult.) “You’re a nice guy, Mike, and I want you in my life, but marriage, right now, it isn’t— Is it really the best thing for either one of us?”

This is so backwards.

He settles his arm around her back and rests his forehead on her shoulder.

“I love you,” he mumbles, and she makes a sort of whimpering noise.

“I know you do.”

She reaches up to thread their fingers together and sighs.

“This is the right move, isn’t it?”

Lifting his head, he scoots over to lean against her side; she leans against him in return.

“I think so.”

She hums a couple of notes.

“Does he love you?”

He doesn’t particularly want to respond to that.

“You’re making this way too easy for me,” he says instead. “I’m an asshole, you should be raking me over the coals.”

“Yeah.” She smiles. “I know. And I think I’ll have the right to for awhile, and just so you know, it might still happen. But…” She sighs, tilting her head down to her chest. “I’d like it if we could still be friends after this, and I think doing that right now would kind of get in the way.”

He has the weirdest life.

“How’d you know?”

“Lucky guess.”

“Lucky guess,” he mimics dryly, and she rocks her head back and forth.

“Educated guess,” she corrects herself. “Mike—you’ve never seen the two of you together, but it’s kind of hard to miss. And…you were so determined to go to prison for him, and he nearly killed someone when he thought he wasn’t going to be able to get you out, and now even though you’re not working with him, you’re still spending so much time together, and after this trip, it—it just…makes sense.” She smiles to herself and he thinks he sees the bitterness behind it. “He told me he missed you.”

He sags against the backrest, closing his eyes.

When did everything get so twisted?

“I really do love you,” he says.

Leaning over, she presses her lips tenderly against his.

“I really love you too,” she whispers. “I hope everything works out.”

He nudges his nose against hers affectionately, and she grins.

“How about Thai?”

Reaching into his back pocket, he pulls out his cell and holds it up between them.

“I’m buying.”

“You’re such a gentleman.”

He smirks and dials from memory.

Let’s decide this won’t blow up in our faces.

\---

Today is Friday.

Today is The Day.

Mike should have made Harvey wait until Saturday, so he could’ve come over with a clear head instead of weary and hungry and exhausted from the day’s work.

Twenty-twenty hindsight.

Harvey probably won’t even come over. “Forget it,” he’d said right after it happened; forget I did that, let’s move on with our lives and hang in this limbo until we’ve both moved on to bigger things and left each other behind, and we might as well take this secret to our graves while we’re at it.

Right. That’s an option.

Rachel kissed him on the cheek before she left this morning, and she wasn’t sure what time she’d be home and she hopes it won’t be too late but it might be and if he goes ahead and has dinner alone that’s fine, she actually might end up grabbing something with Katrina, they’ve been working together on some stuff lately. (“I’ll tell you all about it later,” she said.)

Mike massages his forehead and his temples. There’s no reason to get so worked up.

He should spend the day being productive, that’s what he should do.

It takes about two hours to post his résumé to ten different nonprofits (only vaguely and tangentially related to law, not enough to register on Anita Gibbs’s radar) with individualized cover letters which probably won’t make a difference (if they’re even read to begin with).

He should pound the pavement, that’s what he should do.

(What if Harvey comes by and he’s not here?)

Harvey isn’t going to come by.

(What if he does, though?)

Mike makes a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and turns on a recorded show about the history of comedy. It’s pretty good, he decides about fifteen minutes in, when his sandwich is long gone. Rachel might like it too; he won’t delete it yet, she can get to it when she gets to it.

Half an hour later, the show ends.

He wants to call Harvey.

That’s the worst idea anyone’s ever had.

He cracks open the BARBRI handbook and starts skimming; his mind wanders as the words begin to blur.

At least this time Harvey is coming to him rather than the other way round. They’re quite a pair, the two of them.

At one minute to ten, there’s a knock at the door; immediately after, the doorbell rings. Mike chuckles under his breath.

“Harvey.”

Harvey looks up to meet his gaze, and Mike wonders (not for the first time) why people (in general) have a tendency to look away from doors while they wait for them to be answered. He steps back to let Harvey in and follows him to the living room, where neither of them sits.

Harvey looks out the window across the way.

“This was a good idea,” he says; Mike cocks his head and he elaborates: “Waiting. That was a good call.”

Oh.

He saw this coming. No, really.

“Yeah,” he says, looking away (is it embarrassment, maybe, probably).

“Marcus called me,” Harvey goes on, which is so unexpected that Mike blurts out a baffled “ _What?_ ” before he can think better of it, and Harvey grins.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Holding his hands behind his back, he kicks a little step forward and drops his shoulders. “He said he didn’t want to ‘end it like that,’ but he didn’t know what else to do; he was just so goddamn angry.”

Mike winces, wishing Harvey would face him while he speaks. It’s not so bad, though; he can see his reflection in the window, more or less, which is almost as good (sort of not really).

“He was angry with you,” Harvey admits, and Mike hears pride in his tone but he must be imagining it, surely. “He was furious that I’d let you say what you said and I told him, I said ‘Marcus, if you think I can control a single thing Mike Ross says or does…’”

He does turn then, just his head, and Mike parts his lips without speaking.

“I said ‘I don’t regret bringing him, I don’t regret the things he said, and if you’re looking for an apology, you know what, you’re not going to get it.’”

He’s not talking about his conversation with Marcus anymore. That’s probably what really happened—Mike can hear him saying it, can hear Marcus’s wounded silence on the other end—but that doesn’t matter.

“I shouldn’t have kissed you,” Harvey says, still looking at Mike but it’s just out of the corner of his eye. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to—”

“But I’m not sorry about what came out of it,” he elaborates over Mike’s objection. “And if you think it was just some knee-jerk response to what you said to my brother, to you standing up for me, well it wasn’t, alright, I can promise you that.”

Mike shakes his head, wanting to smile or something but unable to move himself to do it.

“I don’t think that’s what it was.”

Harvey nods; good. We understand each other.

“This is still a ridiculous idea.”

Mike tips his head back and turns away. (Maybe we don’t.)

“Rachel wants to call off the wedding,” he says, as though it’s some sort of defense. “She thinks we’re better off as friends.”

Harvey pauses to consider his response. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he settles on, which is understandable.

“She’s probably right,” Mike admits. “We’ll see how it goes.”

Harvey steps back to stand beside him, and they look at each other carefully.

“That wasn’t the only reason this is a bad idea,” Harvey warns, and Mike shakes his head.

“You didn’t say ‘bad,’” he corrects, “you said ‘ridiculous,’ you said this was a ridiculous idea. And you’re right, it is, it’s the most ridiculous thing I think I’ve ever even thought about doing.”

“You pretended to be a lawyer for five years.”

“Yeah, and what does that tell you?”

Harvey ducks his head down and smiles.

“Tells me you’re a guy with his priorities all out of order.”

Mike narrows his eyes and begins to scowl. “Harvey—we don’t even work together anymore, why is this so insane for you?” His scowl darkens then and his shoulders flex back; “Please don’t tell me it’s because we’re both guys, I don’t think it gets any more cliché than that.”

Harvey frowns. “No, Mike, of course not, that has nothing to do with it. God, I fucked our rival team’s pitcher the night before the big game just so he wouldn’t be able to handle more than two innings on the mound.”

“Yeah, that’s romantic.”

“That’s my point, though.”

Mike reels back as though he’s been slapped, disproportionately shocked by the reply; Harvey raises his hands to gesticulate as he talks, as though it helps him to order the words somehow, and his face takes on a twisted expression equally frustrated and desperate.

“You’re a good person, Mike.” He sighs through his pinched lips; this is difficult to get out, this is going somewhere we don’t want to be. “And I’m not just talking about your work at the firm, or trying to help your cellmate, or wanting to be knighted or sainted or whatever it is you plan on doing with your life now. Mike, hiring you was…the stupidest, the most reckless, the most disloyal thing I could possibly have done to the firm. To Jessica, to all my colleagues. But I did it, and I’ve never regretted it, not once, and do you know why?”

He thinks he does, actually; well, no, he _hopes_ he does, but not really, he can’t be sure, so he shakes his head slightly, barely moving at all, unable (unwilling) to take his eyes away from Harvey’s. Harvey looks like he’s trying not to try not to cry, one step removed from Real Emotions, and it makes Mike’s heart hurt.

“Because you are a good person,” Harvey repeats, “you are probably the best goddamn person I know, you’ve made _me_ a better person, you son of a bitch, and I wasn’t kidding when I said I wasn’t the one who should be worried about regrets, and I… I can’t do that to you.”

Do you understand what _this_ is doing to me?

Mike wants to ask, but he won’t, he won’t. That’s not nice, that’s not fair. (We’ve been horrible people who have done horrible things, but we’re trying, aren’t we, we’re trying our best.) He wants to push Harvey up against a wall and kiss him until he can’t breathe, but that won’t accomplish anything except to delay the rest of this…thing, whatever it is, and probably add some complications besides.

Instead of all that, Mike takes a single step to close the space between them and makes sure not to touch Harvey as he looks him dead in the eye.

“You’re the best goddamn person I know,” he says as resolutely as he can manage, and it comes out a little shaky all the same. Harvey opens his mouth to interrupt, gets as far as a choked vowel noise before Mike steamrolls over him: “Do you know why? It’s not because you always do the right thing, or stick up for the underdog, or rescue stupid kids who get in over their heads and need to find their way out of a hole they’re probably going to die in. It’s not anything that would get you the cover story in Good Samaritan Monthly, but you know what it is?”

He pauses, and this time Harvey does get a chance to respond; he doesn’t abuse it, though, that would be cruel.

“What is it, Mike?”

Mike stabs his finger into Harvey’s chest. “It’s because you’re my _favorite,_ okay? You’re the person who makes me want to make something of myself, you’re the person who teaches me how, you’re the person who will never leave me, who will never betray me, who won’t always get it but will _never_ stop trying, and _you_ are the person I keep coming back to when everything else turns to absolute shit, so you know what, you don’t even have to be close to perfect, you just have to be _you._ ”

Harvey shakes his head. “Mike, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“ _You_ don’t know what I’m talking about,” Mike retorts (rather immaturely, but to be fair, he never planned for things to come to this point). “Harvey, I’m trying to tell you that I _love_ you, okay? And having met your fucking insane family, I’m not sure you’re gonna believe this, but you don’t have to prove yourself or anything to make me feel this way, you got that? It’s just you, it’s all… It’s always you.”

Well.

On the one hand, it’s the only logical conclusion, the converging point in time to which all moments and events prior have always been leading.

On the other, Harvey should probably stop trying to quantify what’s going on right now.

Go with your gut, man.

He shakes his head.

“You’d get hurt,” he says. “I— These sorts of things don’t last for me, and I don’t want to see you get hurt because I’m being selfish.”

“So you’re saying I don’t know what I’m getting into,” Mike deduces, holding up his fist when Harvey tries to confirm it. “Let’s see, you’re selfish,” he raises his index finger, “you’re arrogant,” then his middle finger, “you’re stubborn,” his thumb, “you’re elitist,” he folds in his thumb and raises his other four fingers, “you’re distrustful.” There’s the whole hand. “I dunno, sounds to me like I know _exactly_ what I’m getting into.”

Without thinking it through, without quite meaning to, Harvey grabs Mike’s shoulder and furrows his brow anxiously.

“Mike, _I can’t lose you,_ ” he insists, and Mike looks baffled, which is understandable, so he tries to explain: “I can’t go back to not knowing you, alright, I can’t go back to not having you in my life.”

“And…that would happen if we were together.”

“Eventually!”

His breath hitching, Mike stops himself from volleying back; his eyes seem almost to vibrate as he looks into Harvey’s, darting between them, left to right, while Harvey waits, his grip tightening, forcing himself to be patient, wondering just when it was that he started to hate himself this much.

Reaching up, Mike takes Harvey’s face in his hands, fitting his thumbs to the underside of his jaw as his eyes stop darting, narrowing intensely.

“Do you trust me?”

Well if that isn’t the stupidest question in the history of everything.

“Of course I do.”

Mike nods slowly and slides his hands to cup the back of Harvey’s neck; Harvey thinks he’s being patronized, which is more embarrassing than anything else.

“So you trust me to tell you if something’s wrong?”

Of all the times not to have seen this coming.

Harvey nods.

“Yeah.”

Mike leans forward a little.

“And I trust you to listen,” he says, “so as far as I can tell, the only thing we’ve got left to do now is give this a shot.”

Harvey tries to shake his head again, but Mike’s hands make it harder.

“I don’t deserve you.”

“But you’ve got me.”

Harvey laughs, and Mike risks a smile.

“You couldn’t just let me down easy,” Harvey mutters into his chest, and Mike uses his thumbs to tip his head back up.

“No,” he says firmly.

Then he kisses him.

It’s fierce and emphatic, exactly what Harvey would expect and not remotely in the way he would expect it; Mike clearly knows what he’s doing, moving enthusiastically and adapting quickly to Harvey’s reactions and Harvey does his best to match him step for step, grabbing the front of Mike’s cheap button-up and yanking him closer. The idea that they might, just maybe, be on their way to the bedroom crosses his mind for an instant before he feels Mike flinch against him and move away just enough to keep them apart.

“What’s wrong?” Harvey asks as soon as he catches his breath, but Mike only shakes his head.

“Well that was quick.”

God dammit.

No longer so single-minded, Harvey clearly hears the soft click of Rachel’s heels as she sashays across the floor, dropping her coat over an armchair and her bag on the sofa before she rests her hands on her hips. Extracting his fists from Mike’s shirt, Harvey smooths his lapels and turns to her with his best “closer” expression, but it’s almost derailed by her apparent lack of ire. Lack of anything, really.

Mike steps up beside him and does a respectable job of pulling down his hems.

“I can’t say that’s what I was expecting to walk in on,” Rachel comments, “but I can’t really say I’m surprised that I did.”

Mike rubs at the back of his head.

“Listen, Rachel…”

“No no,” she interrupts, “don’t try to explain. We’re not engaged anymore, I don’t have any right to dictate who you sleep with.”

“We didn’t—”

“It’s called hyperbole, Mike.”

Mike nods uncomfortably and Rachel continues to stare.

The funny thing is, Harvey doesn’t really bear her any ill will; the timing of all of this is a little convenient, and even if she spent their excursion to Boston reconsidering her and Mike’s relationship and talking herself out of it, it makes sense that she’s still smarting from the breakup. They’d been together quite awhile, after all, and the marriage had been predicted almost since the beginning.

Hoping to let her save face, he clears his throat.

“It’s late,” he says unnecessarily, “I should be getting home.”

Rachel smiles at him, or tries to; he’ll give it to her.

“I’m glad your trip was a success,” she says, which sounds oddly irrelevant until he realizes it’s very much related. He smiles back and nods his acquiescence.

“Thank you.”

They wait around, looking at each other for a minute or two before Harvey nods and starts toward the door.

He makes it to the hall before he pauses, drumming his fingers on his thigh.

“You coming, Mike?”

Mike follows as though Harvey has him on a tether, or he was waiting for the invitation, grabbing his suitcase as he passes it; Harvey moves aside to let him by and Rachel reaches out to grasp Harvey’s arm before he can follow.

“Don’t hurt him,” she implores. “Please.”

He doesn’t know quite what to make of that, but she’s so sincere, so well-intentioned; he nods, resisting the impulse to remove her hand, and she smiles, removing it herself.

Harvey meets Mike in the main hall, where he’s already called the elevator.

“So,” Mike speculates, “you have a guestroom in that fancy penthouse suite?”

Harvey nods indifferently as he presses the button for the lobby.

“My bed’s a king, you know.”

Mike grins at the floor.

“You don’t say.”

Harvey clasps his hands behind his back.

“Nope.”

Ray is waiting outside; Harvey considers opening the door for Mike, but he goes around to the far side on his own and slides into the backseat.

Harvey waits until they’re moving before he brings it up again.

“You know I’ll still respect you in the morning even if we don’t have sex.”

Mike nods thoughtfully.

“But you’ll respect me if we do, right?”

Reaching over, Harvey grabs Mike’s tie and yanks him across the middle seat, firmly kissing him. They’re both grinning when they part, and Harvey tugs Mike’s tie gently.

“You’re goddamn right I will.”

Mike kisses him again.

In the back of his mind, Harvey comes to the odd conclusion that it was the worst parts of his past that seem to have led to the best part of his future.

When all is said and done, he prefers to live in the present.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you notice the Katchel? It's small but it's there. They're in the flirty making-excuses-to-spend-time-together pre-openly-expressed-interest stage.
> 
> Also because this story was conceived purely as a way for Mike to yell at Harvey's family and became Marvey along the way, I took the easy road and ended it before Harvey had to deal with the fallout of the Boston trip or Mike had to deal with the fallout of his and Rachel's breakup. I apologize for the obvious cop out.


End file.
